A revised version for publication of the opening text of my doctoral dissertation. The text was written in 2017, and the dissertation was completed and defended in 2018 at the “I.L. Caragiale” National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest.
Techniques for Developing and Training Creativity Specific to the Art of Acting
Doctoral supervisor:
Associate Professor Paul Chiribuță, PhD
Doctoral candidate:
Bogdan-Mihail Dumitrescu
Acknowledgements
Writing a doctoral dissertation in which you claim that you can offer viable answers to the questions that concern practitioners and theorists of the art of acting is a difficult task. Such questions have existed ever since the conscious need first arose to systematise the creative phenomena and processes specific to this profession.
From the very first sentence, a controversial issue quite rightly emerges: the pedagogical competence of an actor who, like me, does not rank among performers established through awards or notable acting achievements, or recognised by specialist juries.
To begin a truthful and organically grounded undertaking whose outcome is, at present, unknown to both me and you, the reader, I feel the need to present, honestly and without reservation, the first parameter of the situation we are experiencing together right now: I am writing this introduction, while you are reading this beginning.
I am Bogdan Dumitrescu, a 40-year-old actor and improviser. I graduated from the Academy of Theatre and Film, Acting Department, in 2001, in the class of Professors Ion Cojar and Gelu Colceag. I later returned to the “I.L. Caragiale” National University of Theatre and Film to pursue a master’s degree in Acting Pedagogy, which I completed in 2014.
That same year, I applied and was admitted to the doctoral programme at the same university, with the research topic “Techniques for Developing and Training Creativity Specific to the Art of Acting”. The results of the study, begun in 2014, will be brought together in the pages that follow.
These are the given circumstances of the situation you are experiencing right now, reader.
I allow myself this personal and colloquial approach precisely in order to exemplify, from the outset, the language specific to the pages that follow: a technical vocabulary born from my personal adaptation of the language used by theatre-makers and pedagogues who are important to us, including Konstantin Stanislavski, Viola Spolin, Sanford Meisner, Keith Johnstone, Lee Strasberg, Del Close and Ion Cojar.
The situation we are experiencing together therefore has the following parameters. From my point of view, the truth of the moment is this: Saturday, 5 August 2017, 12:37 p.m. I am at home, trying to put into words an introduction that will provide you with all the information necessary to understand and accept the written undertaking that follows — perhaps even to believe in it.
It is a doctoral project that aims to offer alternative perspectives on the creativity specific to the art of acting, if not to find some answers.
These are, broadly speaking, my expectations.
At the other end of the communication process that has just begun are “YOU”, the reader: the person who, whether by chance or not, has found or was meant to find this work.
Who are you?
You know best. I can only intuit or imagine your role within a subjective yet somewhat predictable horizon.
You may be an acting student searching for answers to personal and professional uncertainties; a fellow actor or director interested in the subject; a professor on the committee who has to evaluate me; a former teacher concerned about the fate of former students; one of the students whom my explanations have confused or helped; or a doctoral candidate currently searching for ideas for their own dissertation.
The horizon of expectation for this “you, the reader” is therefore limited and somewhat predictable.
I thank all potential readers. And to those of you who are reading these lines right now, whoever you may be, thank you once again!